Erhard Milch

Erhard Milch (30 March 1892-25 January 1972) was a Field Marshal of Nazi Germany who oversaw the development of the Luftwaffe as a part of the German rearmament following World War I. However, his ineffective management led to the decline of the air force as World War II raged on.

Biography
Erhard Milch was born in Wilhelmshaven, German Empire on 30 March 1892, the son of a Jewish pharmacist and Imperial German Navy veteran and an ethnically-German mother. He enlisted in the Imperial German Army in 1910 and became an artillery lieutenant, serving in World War I. Milch resigned from the military in 1920 to pursue a career in civil aviation, working for Junkers, and he joined the Nazi Party in 1929. In 1933, he became State Secretary of the Reich Ministry of Aviation, and he worked with Hermann Goering to establish the Luftwaffe. The Gestapo repeatedly investigated him for his Jewish descent, but they found only a loyal Nazi. During World War II, he led Luftflotte 5 during Operation Weserubung in Norway, and he became Field Marshal after the Battle of France. Milch was also appointed Air Inspector General, but he failed to increase Germany's aircraft output, leading to the Luftwaffe's strength declining as World War II raged on. In 1944, after he sided with Joseph Goebbels in a failed attempt to fire Goering from command of the Luftwaffe, Goering had Milch fired. He was captured by Soviet troops in the Baltics on 4 May 1945, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment during the Nuremberg Trials for using human slave labor in his aircraft factories. His sentence was commuted to 15 years in 1951, but he was released in June 1954, and he died in Dusseldorf, West Germany in 1972.